


Shiva

by Hominid



Series: Headwaters [2]
Category: Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bester isn't so bad - or is he?, Betrayal, Fascists R Us, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Psi Corps, Slight divergence from canon (after S4E8), Telepathy, Trust, Whatever happened to Ms Winters?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-23 10:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15603891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hominid/pseuds/Hominid
Summary: Set in Season 4, between “The Illusion of Truth” and “Thirdspace”.  Carolyn Sanderson’s death in cryo leads to a confrontation between Bester and Ivanova and an agreement that surprises at least one of them. A small divergence from canon that could lead to bigger ones. No major warnings, but you know anything with Bester in it tends to get disturbing. Any action you find here is all in the mind.You can start straight in here or read "Riverine" to learn more about what happened to Carolyn.





	1. Mutually Assured Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carolyn is dead. Bester is cracking up. Ivanova has to decide what to do about it.

Grief ricocheted inside his skull. The urge to share with the minds around him in the chapel was a primal thing, but hardly a great idea. Even at home, among his own, Carolyn wasn't for sharing. Here on Bablyon 5, he was in enemy territory. His deal with the command staff had never been worth much, and most people on the station would gladly report him if they knew how much trouble he’d get into just for being here now.

His cover story, for any mundanes who needed one, was that he’d heard about the memorial service while passing through on the trail of a blip. Since most of the deceased had been Corps members, it was his duty to attend. His cover story for the Corps had him out running hyperspace drills with Black Omega, repairing combat readiness and morale after the blockade fiasco. The drills were real enough, as was the need for them. Stealing time from that to travel to B5 was failing his most trusted people in their hour of need – a double betrayal then – but with luck they’d be able to conceal his absence, and what good was trust if he couldn't use it to help him in a crisis?

If circumstances made the drill story unsustainable, they’d fall back on plan B, an urgent covert mission to B5 prompted by alarming reports from the Ace in the Hole project. He’d claim to have run a few checks, made a few tweaks to the subject’s programming, nothing more to worry about. It was plausible, but at the cost of revealing his trip to B5, and that wouldn’t bear close inspection. If anyone at home learned that he’d attended a memorial for some blips, one of them his lover, part of a consignment intended for the president’s Shadow friends but snatched from them under mysterious circumstances, and now traced to the breakaway space station that he’d made his private preserve… Even Synilda could probably join the dots on that one.

So, while he was in uniform to give the locals an impression of official business, nothing to hide, he was aiming to pass unnoticed as far as possible.  But understanding that rationally didn't stop the monkey mind trying to broadcast at full P12 range as it howled to be known and comforted. He yanked his blocks tighter around the noise, swallowing down the prickling at the back of his eyes, wishing the mundanes would get on and start this service so he could be done and out of here as soon as possible.

Once again, he wondered why he'd come. Carolyn was gone. He could grieve for her anywhere, everywhere. Yet he'd spent favors and luck to be on Babylon 5 today, to put a flower on a box. Denial was one reason, certainly. This place was where he'd last spoken with her, where he'd come to tell them both they'd be together again. Those trips had become a thing he craved and drew strength from, though he wasn't fool enough to buy into his own make-believe. Carolyn had cared for him, loved him maybe, but if she'd had the chance to go where the Corps couldn't reach, where he couldn't follow… He hoped she'd have waited long enough for a goodbye, but suspected she had the sense not to risk it.

It caught him off guard, choking his throat and eyes shut and taking all his concentration to keep from making a sound, vocal or mental. Who'd have thought he'd want this so fiercely? To be saying goodbye in a docking bay instead of a chapel. To be missing her because she was somewhere else, raising a child he would never meet. Just for her not to be nowhere and nothing.

Fuck.

He swallowed salt and blinked his eyes open to find Susan Ivanova staring into them. He knew what she thought about sex between psi cop and captive blip. Let her. But he didn't have to put up with her untrained psi. He slammed his blocks back into place until he was as shut off as a man in a life pod, monitoring the chapel through a relay screen. That was better.

 

 

Ivanova had been practising her cover story all week: someone ought to represent the station to show respect for Psi Corps’ victims, and of course she had sympathy because of her mother...

Brother Theo never let her get started. “Commander! How splendid that you could find the time! I know Dr. Hobbs will appreciate the support.  Between you and me, she’s been dreading the prospect of speaking for station command.”

With Stephen off to Mars, and the trouble with Earth and ISN, Lillian was left to cover everything for everyone. If Susan hadn’t been so worried about hiding her telepathy, she’d have seen that her presence at the service needed no excuse. 

“Hi, Lillian. You want me to take care of the opening address?  I’m getting pretty used to them by now.”

“Oh, that would be a relief!" Lillian handed her a pad of notes. "I haven’t done this before, and I’m so exhausted I’ll probably get the names wrong or start crying halfway through, or something.” 

She glanced around the chapel. Theo had gathered a couple of dozen mourners, mostly lurkers. Best not to ask if they were rogue telepaths or normals lured by the prospect of free finger food. At least Bester hadn’t shown up.  If he did, she’d given orders to send him straight to the brig. He should certainly be kept well away from poor Lillian, who looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

 "No-one could have anticipated what happened, and if you and Stephen couldn’t save them, no-one could. This wasn’t your fault."

"People keep telling me that. But innocence doesn’t bring doctors’ mistakes back to life.”

She was spared finding an answer because Theo had taken his place at the front and was announcing that Commander Ivanova would open the ceremony with a few words.

“We don’t know how they came to be in cryotubes on an enemy freighter that was damaged in hyperspace, but it’s clear they didn’t go willingly. We honor their stand for freedom and Earth as we commit their bodies to the stars.  We remember Anahita Falki, Ben Monserrat, Finlay Saldanha, Carolyn Sanderson, River Sanderson, Oliver Wong, and an unknown Earth telepath. “Brother Theo will now lead us in a non-denominational act of remembrance.”

It was sweet that someone had named Carolyn’s baby. Had she been conscious long enough to speak with Stephen or Lillian? The other names came from matching up ID bracelets with Psi Corps records Bester had smuggled out to them – except for one rogue who’d been sold to the Shadows without so much as recording his capture.  She could only hope that noting their deaths by name would send a signal that someone was keeping score.

She sat back down as Theo continued the service. Lillian whispered, “Thank you.” A splash of red caught her eye. One of the caskets had a rose on it. But Bester couldn’t be here, could he? Without her knowledge?

She vaguely heard Theo say how every parting is the start of a new journey, not only for those who depart, and she _knew_ Bester was in the room. Perhaps she'd sensed him all along. He was here, somehow, and with no security escort, which meant he’d snuck in on the sly. This would never have happened if Michael was still in charge. Glancing round, she opened her mind to taste the emotions in the room. Mostly it was dull sorrow, some anger, some guilt, some boredom, and yes, from somewhere at the back, a barb of real pain, clutched, clenched, and not quite contained. 

Turning to scan the room, she found a small figure in black, away in a corner, backlit by a mental flare of flame and salt. Then he was gone. He must have slammed down blocks so dense she couldn't even feel her psi bouncing off them. Well it wouldn’t work for long. The trick was to see only with her eyes. She pinned him after a few attempts, only to lock with a gaze so bleak she felt ashamed and had to turn away.

The service ended, and she located Bester again just as he was slipping out. Something furtive about him made her hurry to follow.  Sure enough, instead of leaving via the lobby, he ducked into a service corridor that would take him towards the Cobra bays.  What the hell was he up to?

"Susan, are you ok?" Lillian put a hand on her shoulder.

"Funerals have a way of reconnecting us with our departed loved ones," said Theo, whether explaining to Lillian, to herself, or making holy small talk, she couldn’t tell. "Even funerals of strangers."

"Yes.  That's very true.  But I'm fine, Theo, really. I just remembered something I… um… need to catch up with.  We'll talk later.  Lillian, give yourself a break and let Theo talk you out of that guilt.  You don't need to beat yourself up."

"Oh, I'm not paid to look after atheists like Dr. Hobbs."  Theo frowned. "Come to think of it, I'm not generally paid at all, so I may as well look after atheists as anyone else, I suppose. Can you stay for a sandwich, doctor?"

She left them to it and hurried after Bester.  The service corridor twisted and turned, and she didn't know it well enough to be sure there wasn't a side branch soon.  She needed to catch up before he had a choice of route.

She ran around a sharp bend, PPG in hand, and almost fell over him, crouched against the wall, gloved hand over his face, and locked so deep behind his blocks that she couldn't sense his mind at all.  It seemed to work both ways since he hadn't reacted in the slightest to having her barrel around the corner and skid to an undignified halt right on top of him. 

Now what?  Should she summon security, or haul him to the brig herself?  Call for a med team, or just turn and walk away? He didn't look like a man hell-bent on oppressing rogues or wrecking her station.  What he looked like was a man overcome by grief who'd crawled away to be alone while it claimed him.  The kindest thing would be to tiptoe away before he noticed, and then pretend it had never happened.

But since when did Bester deserve kindness?  What if he'd sensed her catching up and this was all an act? Those blocks _might_ be hiding grief, or he might be chuckling behind them as soft-hearted Commander Ivanova fell for his ploy and left him to get on in peace with whatever he was scheming this time. She crouched down beside him.  If he was bluffing, she'd play along.  If not, well, it was always wise to keep an eye on Bester.

Up close, the wet on his face was real enough, and smeared slimily under his hand.  Plenty of people could fake tears, but would anyone fake snot?  After a while, she tried calling his name, even putting a hand on his shoulder, but nothing seemed to get through. Gathering her courage and her shields, she touched fingertips to his hair and spoke his name again.  His eyes opened and looked at her between his fingers.

"Go away.  Please."

"Not a chance.  I can't decide if you're a threat to the station or just to yourself, but either way, I'm not leaving you on your own."

"Whatever happened to wanting me dead?  We both know you’ve almost killed me twice now.” He grinned. “Third time lucky."

"You're insane!"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes! No! You're not in any state to be wandering about on your own."

He sighed and closed his eyes.  She thought he was shutting her out again but then his blocks shifted, letting her sense some of what he'd been locking in.  It hurt. She’d felt that hurt for her mother, her brother, her father. Only a few weeks ago, she’d felt it for the captain, and it had almost broken her.

He wiped his face on his sleeve and glared. "Walk away.  Either I'll get myself to a transport and be out of here or… or I won't. Either way, you can forget you saw me.  I give you my word I won't harm your precious station or anyone on it.  _Walk_."

She didn't need to see his eyes tighten to feel the compulsion he sent with the last word.  She let it push her back to standing but then shrugged it off and shook her head at him.

"Forget it, mister.  We're going to get you to a nice quiet holding cell where you can sleep the sleep of the heavily tranquilized.  In the morning you might even thank me."

She reached out a hand to help him to his feet, but he ignored it.

"How about blackmail?"

From his tone, he might have been offering extra mayo on the side.

_What?_

"I can have you out of Earthforce and into a relocation camp faster than your former friends can say, 'She lied about being a mindfucker.’”

Their eyes were locked over the muzzle of her PPG, which was levelled at his face in a white-knuckled two-hand grip, though she didn’t remember aiming it. When had he seen?  Just now, when she touched his cheek?  Before?  She had a brief flash of him dabbing blood from his mouth that time in the brig, an odd smile for someone she'd just smacked in the face.

"Oh, please!  That was just making sure you truly were enemies of Clark and the Shadows.  I picked up your psi long before that, as soon as I met you, in fact.  It would be hard not to. Oh, your mother taught you well, but she was, what, a P6?  She couldn't help you hide what she couldn't see herself."

Fury replaced fear. Her grip on the PPG was steady now.

<Go on! You know you want to.> The words formed in her mind, but she knew they were his thoughts. Mostly his.

If he'd got to his feet, she might have pulled the trigger, but it went against all her values to execute an unarmed captive on his knees, even this one.  There was something else too.

"If it's so obvious I’m a latent telepath, how will you explain not turning me in long ago?"

"You really think I care if they say I'm incompetent?” He laughed.  Not in a good way. “I’m not short of justifications. Some psi cops believe a few unlicensed telepaths out in the general population are useful insurance – in case the mundanes decide to use our registers as death lists. Or I could point out what anyone with half a brain can see: better a vulnerable asset inside B5 command than another blip rotting in re-ed. At worst, I might get a reprimand for not keeping my superiors fully informed of my decisions.  _You_ , on the other hand, are finished as soon as word gets out.”

“On your feet, Bester. I want to tell forensics I fired in self-defense.”

"Of course.” He wobbled a bit, and kept one hand on the wall, but the grin he flashed her was pure triumph. “But you can save 'latent' for your dear, duped mundane friends. _I know better_."

That one was poison. She hadn't trusted even John with that. She put her PPG to his forehead. At this range, the heat would boil his brain, maybe crack his skull.  Her secret would be so much steam and spatter.

So why did it feel like losing?

"After I kill you, they'll send more psi cops, won’t they?"

"Obviously."

"And they'll detect me right away, just like you did."

"Most likely a little slower. But yes."

She holstered the PPG.

"Then I'll stick with the cop I can blackmail right back. Better a vulnerable asset in high places than just another corpse. Isn’t that right, Mr. Bester?" 

He smiled at that.  Apparently, scaring her half to death had put some life back into him.

"It has. Thank you, Commander."

"Don't thank me until I've decided what to do with you.  Think you can hold it together for a walk through public space?"

"Give me a minute."  He pushed away from the wall, pinched the bridge of his nose, blinked, and straightened his jacket.  "Ready when you are."

As they walked, she tried to work out what to do with him.  In the brig, he'd probably wind up the guards - or vice versa. In his current state, she didn't trust him not to blurt regrettable truths. Guest quarters with security posted outside would be a safer option as well as a gentler one, and definitely a dose of something to make him sleep.  When he woke up, they were going to have a chat about exactly where they stood, specifically the quantity and quality of information that would be delivered to his superiors if her abilities ever, _ever_ , came to the attention of the Psi Corps. 

They were almost back at the chapel when his step faltered, and he put a hand on her arm. "Wait." <I can’t.> Pain, shame, anger, confusion, fear. She’d seen enough real grief this year to feel sure he wasn’t faking.

"OK. Breathe.  I'll find us a back way."  She called C and C to clear the lobby, led him into an empty transport tube and sealed it for command level access only.  He leaned back against the wall, eyes shut, lips pressed together, breathing very carefully, blocks wrapped tight.  Holding the grief in was taking everything he had.  She knew how that felt.  She knew what it could do.

"A tranq and a sleep isn't going to fix this, is it?  You need to grieve properly.  I don’t suppose you’ll get a chance to do that when you get home?"

He shook his head.

Of course not. Psi Corps would probably lock him away for showing mental instability - and that was _before_ they learned he'd sold them out. No, there was only one person in the known universe who could defuse this walking time bomb. She took a deep breath and called on the ceiling panel to witness the extent of her stupidity.

"Well you can’t go home yet then. You need to sit shiva first. Trust me on this. I learned the hard way."

"Sit what?"

"Shiva.  Jewish thing, but anyone can play.  You sit, talk, remember.  People come by and share memories.  It helps."

"Will it make it stop?"

Oh boy.

"Not exactly.  Not right away." 

How could she explain what she still didn't understand to someone who hadn't begun to figure out what was hitting him? 

"Look, right now, you're lost in this, aren't you?"

He nodded.

"Sitting shiva gives you a path through, a way to reach the other side.  Not back to where you were before, but out, where you can function again.  It’s meant to last a week, but I guess even a day would be something."

"I can stay one more day. What do I do?"

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Multiple Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivanova invites another telepath into her quarters. Bester tries something new.

"You can’t sit shiva in the brig. We'll use my place."  She redirected the transport tube and spoke into her link.  "Ivanova to C and C. I'm going offline for a while.  Find cover for my shift tonight.  I have some downtime next week you can use up for trades."

"Why are you helping me?" It was such an obvious question it might as well be voiced aloud.  And it distracted from worse ones: What do you mean, _we_? Why am I letting you? _Can_ anything help?

"Look at you.  You can barely function.  You don't have the first idea how to help yourself, and nobody else is dumb enough to try."

He couldn’t think of a reply to that.

"I’m sorry.  But it's true," she continued.  "I don't want you thinking I’m doing this out of fear, or gratitude for not turning me in.  You made a calculated decision. I don't owe you. And I can make your life very difficult if you try to change your mind."

"Of course.  I was waiting for the right blackmail opportunity, but it never presented, and then…"

"…and now I have as much dirt on you as you have on me. Mutually assured destruction."

They'd stopped outside a door.  She opened it and he followed her through.

"Stop!"

She'd pressured him to come here and now she wasn't letting him in?  Part of him wanted to fry her synapses on the spot.  Most of him didn't care enough to respond at all.  What little was left of rational Al Bester noted that he wasn't going to survive long back home with a response range that skipped out everything between apathy and bloody murder.  Well, apathy would have to do for now.

"I should have warned you."

He caught a whiff of embarrassment, and an image of Talia Winters. That raised a brief flicker of curiosity from his swamp of indifference.

"You know how I feel about your Psi Corps.  Well, I have a house rule: no Corps past this point. Ever. If you still want to come in, you need to leave the badge and gloves by the door."

"You…"  Hysterical laughter wouldn't be a good thing to start now. "You think it's that easy?"

"If you want to keep them on, that’s OK. We can still sit shiva. I’ll just have to think of someplace else we can go."

Her cluelessness was jaw-dropping, but it felt real, with an afterimage of Talia setting aside her badge like something precious and mourned, like a holo of a dead lover. He had no holo of Carolyn.

He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it on the floor, badge attached.  Then he tugged off the first glove and dropped it on top.  The other would take longer, but he liked the idea of putting some effort into this ritual of hers. He kept his back to her as he worked the clenched fingers loose, one at a time, thankful when he felt her decide against offering to help.  He kicked off shoes and socks while he was at it.  By the time the left glove was ready to drop beside the right, she was waiting in an armchair across the room.  He went to join her, curling up with his bare feet on her couch cushions, a display of harmlessness for this madwoman who thought he couldn’t be a psi cop and have visible toes.

"I agree you don't owe me. So why?"

“I've also lost people I love. I handled it badly. Someone went to a lot of trouble to help me.  I guess I want to pay that forward. When the Shadows were killing whole planets, all I could do was read out the names.  The scale of it was too big.  Now, finally, the universe brings me grief on a scale I can deal with – a little. The fact that’s it’s you, just proves what I’ve thought all along: God has a pretty dark sense of humor."

Her mother, of course, and then the brother and father.  Mundanes set a lot of store by family ties, and her mother’s death had been a sorry business, but he didn’t see how any of it could be as bad as…

"Get out!"

He coiled his thoughts back inside his own mind.

"I forgot you could sense a scan."

"No. You forgot that unauthorized scans are an illegal violation of privacy."

“I...” Illegal, sure, but where was the violation if the “victim” never noticed?  They spent all their time shoving their "private" thoughts into your mind then made a fuss if you looked at what they’d shown you.  Still, it _had_ been tactless to push into her memories as if she was mindblind. 

"I promise I won't do it again."

"I promise you'll be in the brig if you do."

If the words were meant to scare him, they failed. But the emotion behind them was more alarming.  She knew he was hurting and she was cutting him slack.

"I was curious to know what you learned, whether it really helped you to heal."

"Rabbi Koslov."  Clumsily, she propelled an image to the surface, more emotion than visual detail, a nice old man.  (Old to her, not to Bester.) "I was a mess after my father died. He found an excuse to come all the way out here and dragged me kicking and screaming to sit shiva. I think he saved my sanity right then, or my soul… I know for sure it was only what he taught me then that let me function at all when we thought the captain was gone."

He’d have liked to know more about that, but this time he was careful not to peek past the surface.  There was plenty there.  She was letting memories rise up into clear view: her last goodbye to her father, trying to hold things together, snapping and messing up, arguing with the rabbi… Sitting, dubious and resentful, people talking, and gradually a warm feeling as pain was shared, grief spoken, acknowledged, memories polished, the taste of tea from the old samovar.  He felt it clearly, that strength of being able to step back and take stock, to know and say what her father had meant to her, what his death had taken away, and what would remain. 

He already knew what Carolyn had meant – everything.  And what he'd lost – the ability to pretend his life wasn't utterly empty.  Could he learn to step back like Commander Ivanova?  _It’s over, but I have the memories?_ Memories of Carolyn in his mind, teasing, <Al, do you even know…?> Too much.  Way too much.  He blocked with everything he had, but the hurt was on the inside and he was locked in with it.

After a while he became aware of someone scratching at the outside of his blocks.  It wasn't loud, and it had no chance of breaking through, but there was a quality to it, like a lost child calling, that drew his attention.  Turning his thoughts outward, filtering the world he'd been shuttering, he found Susan Ivanova up close beside him on the couch.  She held his hand in both of hers, and she was calling him with her mindvoice.

He'd never heard it before, and she clearly wasn’t used to it either.  It was beautiful.  Louder than he'd have expected, but lilting, lurching in different directions like a puppy still growing into its paws.  It was strong and spiky as her persona, but smoky and soft, with hints of the grace it could achieve once she learned to control it.

<Wow,> he thought.

 

 

<Wow.>

She'd never seen a smile reach his eyes before.  This must be how he looked at other telepaths.

<You should do that more often,> he said, inside her mind.

"NO!"  A knot of panic tightened her chest.  "I can’t. I don’t.  Not with anyone. Not since my mother."

He smiled again.  "I guessed that much from the flakes of rust falling off it. A pity.  You have something special. Don't leave it to decay."

How the hell did he do that?  A minute ago, she'd feared he was having a breakdown.  Now he had her on the defensive.

"Mr. Bester, this _something_ _special_ would end my career and land me in prison, because I'm sure as hell not taking sleepers or joining your precious Corps.  And you want me to bring it out and show it to people!  Who the hell would you suggest I trust with that?"

"Me?"

"When hydrogen freezes in hell."

He mugged a puzzled expression. "I'm sorry.  Did somebody say something?"  Then, without moving his lips, <It’s a sad fact that hearing tends to decline when you get to my age. If only there was some other way for you to communicate with me…>

She nearly slapped his smug face, would have if she hadn't been a telepath.  But she could see he was seeking refuge in habit, some cheesy schtick he used on novices and could run on autopilot.  Beneath that veneer, he was a mess. Best not to crack what little he was holding together. Well, maybe just a little.

"There's nothing wrong with your ears.  I used my mindvoice because nothing else was reaching you, and I couldn't come up with a good explanation for needing a catatonic psi cop removed from my couch.  The only person I _ever_ used my mindvoice with was my mother.  Unless you can bring her back, you're not going to hear it again.  Get used to that and talk to me with your mouth."

He sighed. “Fine. Mutilate yourself in memory of your mother if that’s what you want. But it's not the most compelling endorsement of your vaunted grief management skills.”

“I never said I was good at this, just better than you are, which is a very low bar in case you hadn’t noticed. Anyway, it’s me or no-one, unless you have a better teacher lined up to lead you through first contact with human emotion.”

He looked away. “I used to.”

Ah.

“I miss her.”

She squeezed his hand. “That’s good. Tell me more. Just take it slow this time. I don't want you locking yourself behind your blocks again.”

“She… I wish we'd never met, but I can't bear the thought of forgetting her. It makes no sense.”

"Whoever told you life would make sense?"

He sniffed.  "Maybe not out here, where you choose to spend your time.  But the Corps has things better organized.  I... used to think. In the Corps, you know who you are; you have a purpose; you can contribute.  Oh, we do things I wish we didn’t have to, but that’s the price of survival to a better future.  Or it was until we started selling out our own kind." He shook his hand free of hers.  "Oh, it's not as bad as _you_ think.  We're not all monsters.  Mundanes have always hated us, always will.  While they hold the power, we have to play along. A lot of the laters - the ones who lived as normals until their talent manifested - a lot of them think like mundanes anyway.  But somehow…  some of the people at the very top, the ones who ought to be protecting us, some of them are on the wrong side.  They think like mundanes, they hate what we are – what _they_ are – and they sell out their own kind for a place at the mundanes' table. You know, I always thought she was wrong about the Corps.  I was sure I could convince her to join if they would just give her more time…”

He looked down at his hands, and she wondered if he was going to freeze again, but, in a smaller voice, he said, “She wasn't wrong.  I wish I could have told her that."

She knew she must be gawping at him, but whatever she'd thought she was getting herself into when she brought him here, it hadn't included debating the purpose and justification of the Psi Corps, let alone whatever else he was trying to say.  That he wished he'd let Carolyn escape?  That he should have gone rogue with her?

"No of course not.  I had no way to get her out even if I'd wanted to.  Once she came here, that was different.  If we’d found a way to remove the implants, she'd have had choices.  Not me.  I’m loyal to the bone.  Oh, I can leave the symbols at the door to save your sensibilities, but the Corps is my life and I don’t get to leave one until I leave the other. Secretly working with you against Clark and the Shadows, faking a rogue sighting to come to her memorial, talking with you like this, that’s as close to going rogue as I’ll ever get."

He made a joke of it, but it didn't feel like one.

"You know, I can't tell if you need to be sitting shiva for Carolyn, for the Psi Corps you used to love, or for being stuck in the real Corps that always sucked but somehow you only just noticed."

"Can I check more than one option?"

Still not really a joke.  "Sure."

"Hmm.  C is flagrant disloyalty and if I pick B you'll throw me out for breaking house rules.  I'll take A."

"I'm not throwing you anywhere, not today.  Talia couldn't leave it all outside either.  That's the whole problem with the Corps.  Once it sinks its claws into you it never lets go, does it?  My house rule is just that you don't bring in more of it than you have to.  You're doing fine."

He sat very still, his expression revealing nothing, but she could sense… grief, of course, but also… gratitude?

"So it’ll be a multipurpose shiva then," she said, starting to understand that the price of falling in love with Carolyn had been to fall out of love with the Corps, and now the poor bastard was left with neither. No wonder he was falling apart!

He inhaled sharply, rose to pace the rug.

“And of course you heard that.  I’m sorry.”

<Don’t be.> “Truth is truth. Only a mundane would pretend otherwise."


	3. Stage Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sitting shiva can get messy.

She probably should have thought things through more carefully before offering to sit shiva with a man who had no friends for a woman no-one had met. True, Stephen and some of his team had met Carolyn very briefly, but Bester had squashed the idea of asking Lillian to drop by.  So that left the two of them.

"You're going to have to do most of the talking then."

Silence. 

She made herself count to 20, then 50, 100, 200... "OK.  I'll start things off by telling you about my father's shiva while I fix us some coffee, but while you're drinking it you're going to tell me some memories of Carolyn – good, happy ones. You can get working on that while I work on coffee." She brought out the good stuff - he looked like he needed it.  And chocolate bars.  Who’d have guessed she’d be feeding her late-shift comfort stash to a psi cop? As she worked, she talked about her father’s shiva, memories shared there, her own, the rabbi’s, and how talking had let her feel love as well as pain.  It made her cry again, but they weren't painful tears now. 

She wiped them with the back of her hand and smiled at Bester. "See? It can turn into a happy kind of hurt."

He stared at her and she tensed as she felt his mind touch hers.  But it was a tentative contact, asking for permission to scan. 

She shook her head.  "No. Just words for now."  For now?  She made herself breathe slowly.  Calm.  Don't panic.  Don't run.  He's being pretty good here, for Bester. Don't shoot him. 

"Thank you." They both spoke the words, both flinched when they heard.

She ducked down to a low cupboard, more for refuge than for the sugar and cream she eventually located there.  The door banged shut harder than she'd meant it to.  Shades of Talia mocked her for abusing the furniture.  She glanced at Bester but there was no sign he'd noticed.  He really was staying out of her head.

"Drink.  Talk."

Robotically, he lifted the mug she'd set before him and took a gulp. His eyebrows rose.  "Real coffee! I'm honored."  He took another sip, this time paying attention. "It's good.  I normally take it unsweetened, but this is very good."

"You look like you need it. When did you last eat or drink?"

He frowned.  "I'm not sure"

"Or sleep?"

He shrugged. "It's a blur since your Ranger brought the news. Just a jumble of images, and a feeling… like hearing the last of your air hiss out, and you know that’s it, and...  And nothing.”

"It's a normal reaction to emotional trauma."

"I know.  But it’s different from inside."

Different to feeling it in someone else's mind, he meant, and likely having caused it himself. Well, it was too late to get squeamish.

"I hope you picked some happy memories to share with me.  Eat chocolate and tell me about Carolyn."

He used his teeth to open the wrapper, an oddly feral gesture for one so tightly controlled, but of course he had only one working hand.  He snapped off a piece with his fingers, ate it, eyes closed.

She started counting again. 

She was well into the 300s when he said, "After a couple of weeks in re-ed, most blips are ready to promise anything. Our job is to know when they mean it and see that no-one gets hurt if they try rage instead. Sooner or later, they come to see we’re the only family they have, but getting them to that point, dealing with the lying and the backsliding, it's dull, tiring, depressing.  Luckily, psi cops are only brought in occasionally, for high-psi blips who might be ready for a bit of trust. Carolyn was different.  She was evaluating the Corps as much as we were evaluating her.  And she was strong!  When we practised blocking and feinting, she was the only one to get past my outer blocks, so I pulled her for a one-on-one, took her for a walk round the camp."

"Romantic!"

He rolled his eyes. "It's not all sensors and razor wire.  There's a park with trees and a stream, flowers, birds, picnic tables.  Yes, there’s razor wire on the perimeter, but you can forget about it if you stay away from the edge. It's meant to give a taste of how well the Corps cares for its own if they let us."

"You know my views on the Psi Corps.  But I'll pretend it's all hunky-dory as long as you're telling me about Carolyn."

"She liked the stream. Running water reminded her of home, she said. We walked, we talked, and we sat and worked on blocks and scans.  I’d give her my sandwiches and flask of coffee." He raised his mug and drank. "That much is standard procedure.  We can claim a second lunch for ourselves later."

"So you can show how much the Corps loves them without actually going hungry."

"Exactly. What wasn't standard procedure was the thoughts we shared.  You must have done that with your mother."

Oh yes, she remembered.  It had been more nuanced and intimate than a conversation in speech could ever be.

"She'd grown up in a kind of commune, a late-surviving fragment of the old teep Resistance, getting smaller and more isolated year by year, but still organized enough to train her natural talent and give her a set of beliefs about what it means to be a teep That was why she was less lost than the others, harder to break.  I was fascinated by that.  Of course, I was also after intel that might lead us to the rest of her group…"

He'd dropped that little nugget in on purpose, but why?

"… and she was equally intrigued by my experiences growing up in the Corps, and how I could be happy there.  She was smart enough to know there was more than I put out on the surface, so we used that for scan and block.  She was good.  She never got past my real blocks, of course, but she caught a few things I'd left relatively unguarded.”

"Let me guess: you hate having to take orders from mundanes."

"I don't bother hiding _that_ from anyone with psi. This was more:  I don't like sleepers – no need to explain that to you; I disapprove of forcibly separating teep kids from parents who are teeps themselves; plus, I was already, let's say… _ambivalent_ … about some policy decisions at the top of the Corps."

"She got all that? You let her?"

"Not in one visit, but yes, she got all that. I could have stopped her, but the thing is, I liked seeing how fast she caught on to a scent, how close it brought us when she chased it down.  And I suppose a part of me wanted someone to know, to acknowledge the reality of it."

He stopped, looked at her. Waiting.

"I guess telling me out loud isn't quite the same, but OK, I'll believe you're not 100% the Corps' obedient attack dog.  Maybe you do have a few shreds of an actual personality of your own, a molecule of principle even. I acknowledge that reality. There."

"Thank you."

"But weren't you taking a heck of a risk for not much reward?"

"There was no real risk. The Corps knows already, since I submit to routine loyalty scans like everyone else. It doesn’t matter because they also know I can be relied on. Everyone has some reservations, some unhappiness.  You don’t show it to outsiders but, among ourselves, we draw a clear line between thought and action.  My deep loyalty is rock solid and the scans all confirm that. I’ll never betray the Corps.”  He leaned back and spread his arms as though proud of his achievement.  Then his eyes narrowed. “Now, if I had secrets that could call that deep loyalty into question, you can be sure I'd hide them where no-one could see, not without burning down my whole mind on their way in. Luckily, I’m too valuable to damage without good reason."

"If you had such secrets."

"Which clearly I don't."

"Quite.  So you didn't tell her about the Shadows, or that you were coming here to fight them."

"Blips in re-ed are subject to heavy scans on a regular basis.  Carolyn didn’t have the training to keep secrets under interrogation. If I’d shown her any of that, I wouldn't be here now.”

Of course.  She wouldn't have been allowed secrets of her own and she couldn't have kept Bester's for him either.  Psi Corps, the big happy family that knows everything about you.

"But the rewards… That's what I meant about a part of me coming back to life when I was with her.  Feelings I'd locked away and smothered since, since… my whole life, were suddenly out there, known to another mind, and she wasn't shutting them out or coloring them with shame or fear.  She liked them. She liked me. I can't tell you how good that felt."

"So that's when you fell in love with her."

"Yes." His arrogant posturing was gone.  Truth is truth.

" I'd imagined something more… transactional.  You knew that, of course."

"Of course."  He started to give her that look, the one that said, how can you mundanes be so dense?  But then his expression shifted, as if he'd lost interest in that game. "You weren't entirely wrong, but mundanes always oversimplify.  They want everybody's actions to arise from simple motives, single emotions. A telepath sees the true complexity. You’re no mundane, so stop thinking like one."

"I guess I forget sometimes.  And you're not above encouraging a little oversimplification when it suits, are you?"

He waved that aside, more interested in describing his feelings for Carolyn.  That was what she'd brought him here to do, so she bit back the impulse to argue.

"I fell completely in love, but I'm not claiming it was a fairytale romance. Obviously, there _was_ an element of transaction to it, on both sides. I love her; she likes… _liked_ …  me. She liked me a lot, I think. But I'm not deluded enough to imagine I’d have been her first choice under different circumstances.  However, in the circumstances we had, she had a lot to gain from a relationship with me. For one thing, we were a triple-A genetic match. Her pregnancy guaranteed I’d be allowed to divorce Alisha - we’ve been a disappointment to the breeding program and she’s past childbearing anyway. Once Carolyn was registered as a Psi Corps member, we could have been married within days. With my level of privileges, we’d have our own apartment, and a generous DUCT allocation – Domestic Unit Contact Time – to spend with the child.  The last time I saw her, she was almost ready to sign up."

Join the Corps and marry Bester or stay in prison and never see your own baby.  What a choice!

"I know.  But I swear it was only joining the Corps she really struggled with.  She'd worked out that she'd have to submit to conditioning, a lot of it, given her history.  She’d been brought up to value freedom of mind, and the idea of losing that upset her more than being in a cell.  But she was coming around. " He punched the couch and hugged himself, visibly biting back tears. "Damn!" 

She must be broadcasting fury and horror, but she choked it back. Carolyn was beyond help, and Bester’s wife was beyond reach, but he was here now, hurting, and she’d promised to relieve that. “You really wanted that future together, didn't you?"  It was all she could think of to say, to recognize the man's own pain amongst all the pain he’d caused.

"We were so close! I was going to visit her after coming out here to stop the Shadow shipment. I never dreamed she was _in_ the shipment. When I got home, afterwards, they told me the high-psi inmates had been moved to other facilities so my involvement was no longer required.” He stared at the crumpled chocolate wrappers on her table until she half expected them to crinkle and smoke. “If I hadn't rearranged my schedule to come out here, I would have seen her one more time before they took her. Maybe that would have made the difference…."

"If you hadn't come here, that whole shipment would have gone into Shadow ships."

"Let them, if it meant keeping her safe."

He meant it. Bester would sell out anyone to get what he wanted.  But he’d wanted to hurt the Shadows badly enough to work with normals against the Corps.  That couldn’t have been an easy decision, or a safe one.

"But you came here, you hurt the Shadows, and you rescued your telepaths."

Now she looked at it from his side, he really had risked a lot.  B5 might have shot down his starfury on sight or spaced him on arrival. She’d have done it herself if Sheridan hadn’t overruled her.

"You may not have much of a conscience, but you've got a lot of guts."

"That's what Carolyn thought. That's why we believed I could keep her safe. We were wrong about that."

His face tightened, and he grabbed for his coffee, took a long swig, a very long swig…

"That mug was empty before you picked it up."

He set it down, turned his face away.

"You know, crying for her is pretty much the point. It's why I brought you here to sit shiva." To her surprise, she found herself putting an arm around his shoulders. To her amazement, he leaned in and buried his face in her jacket as the sobs shook him. "Good. Good.” She used all the blocks she had to try to hide her cringing embarrassment, suspected he’d see it anyway. “Better out than in, as the rabbi once said to the second-in-command."

Shut up and let him cry, she told herself. She tried to remember what the rabbi had said when she’d finally been ready to howl her grief on his shoulder.  He’d found the right words to bring wisdom and comfort, but she couldn’t remember any of them, only that it had soothed her to hear his gentle voice and feel his hand stroking her hair. Perhaps the words weren’t what mattered. She patted Bester’s head and hummed a song her father had liked. He tightened his arms round her and kept on crying. She thought of how he’d shown up with demands and deals that always included time alone in the cryo unit.  And they’d begrudged and rationed even that.  Her most of all. "You know you did everything you could for her,” she told him. “She was lucky to have someone to love her like that. I bet she thought so too. I bet she really _did_ like you a lot."  It wasn't the most eloquent expression of sympathy, but it was honest. There was no point saying anything to Bester that you didn't genuinely believe. Truth is truth.

He was crying too hard to speak but she felt him nod his head against her shoulder. Just be here with him, she told herself.  Just be in the moment, just breathe, just hold him, just be here…

 

 

Next thing she knew, Bester had stopped crying and the foot she’d folded under her had gone to sleep. There was astonishingly little of him to hold.  Something about his usual presence kept people from noticing how slight he was, but she could pick him up and carry him across the room if she wanted.

<Don't try it.>

She felt her body startle at his mind voice. They both did.

"I won't. If you keep your thoughts out of my head. But I do need to straighten this leg."

He nodded, trying to dry his face with his hand. She handed him a napkin.

"Feeling a little better now?"

He considered that carefully. "Yes." He sounded surprised. "Yes I am. You were right."  He got to his feet, ran his fingers through his hair, tugged his sleeves back into place."Thank you. I owe you." 

"What?” Her foot wasn’t responding yet. She hopped on her good leg, one hand on the couch for balance. Bester stood and watched her.  For all he looked rumpled and puffy-eyed, he now radiated an aura of control and composure.

“Oh no you don't! You might fool the normals, with the light behind you, but you don’t fool me, mister, so how can you hope to fool your buddies in the Corps?”

His shoulders slumped as he dropped the projection.  He looked exhausted, bruised.

“On the plus side, you don’t look like you’re going to have a complete breakdown at any moment, so that’s progress.  But you're not nearly done here yet. We haven't even started on stage two of the shiva."

"What's stage two?"

"Vodka!"

 

 

He felt scarily lightheaded.  He was in no state to risk going home, she was right about that much, but vodka was the last thing he needed.  

"I don't drink spirits."

"You have got to be lying.  If not, then it's high time you loosened up."

"There have been occasions," he conceded.  "But I'm a high P12.  Right now, I hurt, I’m angry, and I’m surrounded by mundanes. Getting drunk would risk turning a miserable day into a massacre."

"You know something? I'm not a ‘mundane’. Also, I’m your last connection to Carolyn. You won't hurt me or my station, so you can drop the drama-queen-supervillain routine."

"I'm not…"  Maybe he _had_ overplayed the scary P12 card – they made it so easy here! But what really took the words off his tongue was her certainty.  She had a fair idea of the damage he could do, and she certainly didn't trust him in general, but she had unshakeable confidence that he wouldn't hurt her, not tonight, not over this.  And she was right.  Not that he was going to say so.

"Anyway, what kind of Jewish spiritual practice prescribes vodka?"

"The Russian kind."

He didn't know what to say, especially when she was standing in her kitchen waving bottle and glasses, and he was somehow standing next to her, hoping she might hug him again.

"Come. Sit."

He let her steer him back to the couch. The glasses were tiny, but she filled them to the brim.  He picked his up, sniffed: vanilla and a blast of ethanol.  It burned on the tongue, but less than tequila.

She took a larger sip from hers.  The grin she shot him was mocking, but friendly. 

He sipped again to show willing. "Not bad," he said, setting his glass on the table and leaning back to watch her drink hers.

"Thank you.  This is the pure Russian deal, no muss, no fuss, no fireworks.  You should taste the stuff my father drank. _That_ was infused with pepper and would take the lid off your skull if you weren’t used to it."

He watched her empty her glass and refill it at once. That was fine.  She could do most of the drinking while he did the grieving and, if he was lucky, some healing.

"You do know it doesn't work by proxy?" she said, though he was sure he'd kept the thought to himself. "You have to do your own drinking."

He took another sip.  The warmth _was_ comforting.  If it started to affect him, he was honestly more likely to fall asleep on her couch than do anything dangerous.

"Your approach is all back to front, but you've done a fine job with the cubs.  Now let's see you tackle their mother." 

"What?" Maybe it was just as well he wasn't allowed to scan her.  He was much too tired to find his way around a mind like hers.

"Another thing they don’t teach in psi cop school?  This is the hour of the wolf, the dead part of the night when time stands still and all you can see is troubles and absences. My father said the way to keep the wolf away was to drink a large glass of vodka before bed. After that, he’d take three very small drinks of vodka, just in case she had cubs. You did great with the 3 three very small sips for the cubs.  Now you need a proper Russian drink for the wolf."  She emptied her glass again to show him.  "Tip it back in one. No taking a breath until the empty glass is back on the table."

Well she'd been right so far, and getting drunk was starting to seem like not such a bad idea, so…

He doubled over, gasping as his lungs tried to climb out of his throat while vodka sprayed from his mouth, nose, eyes and probably ears. 

Ivanova handed him a towel and a glass of water and patted his back while she sniggered. "I guess you really don't drink spirits."

He tried to cast that he didn't drink spirits _like a barbarian_ , but she ignored his mindvoice and his throat wasn’t useable.

"On the plus side, I think the wolf just ran away howling.  I've never seen her so scared."

"I’m good at that," he croaked, glad to get back on familiar ground. "It's the uniform."  He looked down at himself. Undershirt with no badge, now spattered with vodka, naked hands, even the one he liked to keep covered, bare feet, hairy and pale below rumpled pant legs. "Maybe not today."

She grinned at him.  She was trying to keep her thoughts to herself and he was trying not to read them, but it was there in meter-high lights: _You're a mess, Alfred Bester.  What the hell am I going to do with you?_

"I honestly don't know," he said with a slight giggle, which must be the vodka, but was better than more sobbing or choking.

She put the glass back in his hand, full.  "Drink.  But sip it this time. Now that your fearsome psi powers have banished the wolf, I'd prefer for my quarters not to resemble a bar that's been caught in a cyclone."

He sipped. 

She glugged.

"Better?"

"Better."

“What else would help?”

Strange. Somehow in this shiva of hers, that had become an answerable question.

“Talk?  Food?  Sleep?  A water shower?”

“Music.”

“Music,” she repeated, her voice pattern activating the room system.

_Do you wish to make a selection?_

“Bach.” It had to be.  But which one? The cello works or Passions would break him now… “ _Magnificat_.”

“Bach,  _Magnificat_ ,” she repeated for the room.  “And lights half.”

He closed his eyes and let the music show him emotion that was structured, measured, controlled. It built arches, prisms, soaring, breathing symmetries… This was sanctuary, a place to hold the memories and not be crushed by them.


	4. Monsoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bester feels better. Is this a good thing?

The music wasn’t Susan’s idea of comforting, but it seemed to work for Bester.  Tension visibly drained out of him as the voices and instruments twined around each other.  She took the half-empty glass from his hand, sat back in the armchair and drank it for him. He’d dropped his usual blocks, and she could see his emotions settling into the patterns of sound.  Watching his mind work was... well, if it wasn’t as awe-inspiring as her first sight of the Great Machine, it was way, way beyond any mind she’d seen before.  Not just power, but precision, and complexity – and this was while he was exhausted and woozy! She would never admit it, but she was starting to see why he thought being a highly trained P12 was such a big deal.

She watched soaring trunks, branches, roof vaults of sound and thought, dappled with colors of grief that filtered through leaves like stained glass. A soprano voice lifted, fragile but invulnerable, sound becoming structure. Bester smiled in her mind and she took hold of his outstretched hand, hearing the music differently as soon as her skin touched his. Now the patterns of harmony and chord progressions made sense in a way she hadn’t understood before. Each note, fragile as a water droplet, added another point to a lattice that built crystal, then stone, then arches strong enough to hold the sky. The final amen dropped the keystone into place. Together, they stood in its shelter and marveled. 

“That was beautiful.”

“That was Bach.  I just showed you how to hear it. Susan, you need to hide from the mundanes, even from the Corps.  I understand.  But don’t hide from yourself.  You can’t harm your mother’s memory by being what you are, what she was.”

He was trying to be kind.  And almost succeeding.

“Please don’t. Not now, OK?”

He nodded, blocks sliding back into place. “I think I’d like that shower now please.”

“Sure!”

It was a relief to get back to practicalities. “Grab a towel from the cabinet.  You can borrow the robe behind the door if you want to run your things through the laundry.”

As the door closed behind him, she felt the tension sigh out of her. Being around any telepath was a risk, but this… “That settles it,” she informed the Almighty. “I’ve definitely lost my mind.”

Lost? Or stolen? What if the impulse to bring Bester here hadn’t come from her admittedly tangled unconscious, but from him? No. That was paranoid.  She’d shared his thoughts and emotions.  He was scheming, devious, not to be trusted a millimeter, but tonight was different. Hopefully.

She poured herself another vodka, drank it, and refilled the glass. Then she decided she needed her wits about her and poured it back into the bottle, never spilling a drop.  Well at least that proved she was still sober, which was more than could be said for Bester.  She felt herself grin at that.  If Shadow ships were vulnerable to telepaths, and telepaths were vulnerable to alcohol, could they could have seen off the Shadows with a few barrels of vodka and a pressure hose?

 

 

A water shower was a rare treat.  The last time he’d been allowed such luxury must have been that time in Calgary when the Corps had booked them into an uptown hotel. Before Carolyn.  She’d have been free still, with those blips in Sri Lanka… No. Stay in the present.

 “Monsoon rain” – that sounded appealing.  He stepped into the booth and waved his hand over the panel. The light shifted to warm pink as sounds of sitars, birds and jungle creatures accompanied a spatter of fat, warm water drops that built to a downpour. High rank in Earthforce carried better perks than he’d thought.

For a while, he emptied his mind of everything except trying out different settings to soothe sore muscles and headache. It was good. Then he remembered that water allocations on a space station must be limited, even for a mundane with command rank. Regretfully, he shut off the shower and toweled himself dry. His clothes were neatly folded and piled – Corps training had followed him here despite house rules – but they still looked crumpled and smelled worse. The robe hanging from the door was blue satin.  If that was her idea of a dare, she’d underestimated him.  He threw his things into the hopper, punched ‘fastfresh’, did his best with toothgel and a finger, shrugged on the robe, wrapped the towel around his neck to catch drips, paused with his hand on the door. What was waiting out there?  More to the point, how should he steer this?

The thing he wanted most now was sleep. More precisely, sleep was the thing he wanted most out of everything he could actually have or allow himself to think about. (Stop thinking about Carolyn.) So… Yes, sleep. But not in the brig, or even in guest quarters.  He didn’t want to be alone yet, especially not alone among mundanes. Here was better. Susan Ivanova wasn’t properly in control of her psi, and she had some strange notions, but she’d known how to help. Her presence and her imaginary rituals had allowed him to heal.  For that, he was honestly grateful, uncomfortable as the emotion might be. Even her irrational hatred of the Corps was… well, maybe he’d needed a space where he could forget the Mother and Father, just for a moment, just until what they’d done wasn’t quite so…He swung his thoughts away from that track. No more alcohol, that was for sure, and no more memories of Carolyn. Later yes, but not tonight.

But, if he wasn’t going to drink or talk about Carolyn, would he be allowed to stay? The chances seemed good, especially if he handled the commander carefully. If she felt he was being straightforward, not trying to manipulate her, he should be fine. So... Something like this then: he’d go out there, she’d make fun of how he looked in her robe (Yes, perfect! Clothes still in the laundry, another reason not to leave yet.). He’d thank her for everything and say how tired he was.  With luck, she’d offer him the couch. If not, he’d pretend to doze off while they were talking – that wouldn’t be pretense for long.

So. Start by showing some gratitude. Toweling his hair dry with one hand, he elbowed the door open. “The shower is amazing!” It was true, but he added enthusiasm for the sake of positive reinforcement.

The spike of horror that pinged back at him made his jaw drop.  What the hell was going on in that woman’s mind? He pulled his face back to bland, but she’d noticed him noticing.

“Uh, don’t…” she stuttered. “Look, it’s nothing personal.  You just reminded me of someone else for a second there.  Bad memories.”

If only she wasn’t so damn sensitive to scans! He opened his blocks wide to catch any hints that rose near the surface… Ah! “Talia. You weren’t sure how she felt until you saw her standing right here, just like I am.”

Face and thoughts shifted to granite. “I expect it was all in her report.”

It should have been, but, “No, it wasn’t. Not in the parts that reached me, anyway.”

“And which parts was that? I heard her brain’s in a jar on your desk.”

“What?” Oh. _Her debriefing and dissection._ Well there went his hopes of a quiet night on the couch. “No! That was just, you know, fishing for a reaction. Strong emotion activates the ACC and lets you link to other thoughts. I like to see what I can grab a glimpse of.” He was about to add that it had been worth it for the entertainment value alone, but bit his tongue before it got him into more trouble. He really didn’t want to go back to the brig.

“Is she dead? I need to know.  What did the Corps do to her?”

“I don’t know. The Control project wasn’t my monkey.” Damn.  Bad word choice. “It belonged to a department called Sigma. I’ve never had any involvement with that.  All I knew was I glimpsed some black box stuff when I scanned her to look for Ironheart. I didn’t know what it was, and I had enough sense to back away fast. Once I learned we had a sleeper agent on B5, I put two and two together and took care to stay out of her mind.”

She hadn’t hit him or thrown him out, which suggested she believed at least some of it, but he couldn’t risk scanning to be sure.

“I never agreed with using teeps as sleepers, hence I don’t like Sigma and they don’t like me. My responsibility for B5 constitutes a need to know, so I was copied into the general edition of the report, but that’s all. The version I saw never mentioned that Talia was involved with you, which almost certainly means she never told Sigma about it. That’s strange.” It was stranger than strange.  A P5 couldn’t keep secrets under routine interrogation, and Sigma would have gone far beyond routine. He held eye contact to show he was speaking truth. “I truly don’t know what they did with her after the Control project went south. But if she was still a P5 and a loyal Corps member, I expect they found her a role where she could continue to be of use.” As he’d hoped, she passed over the if.  She had no reason to know that synthetic personalities invariably had lower psi than their originals. “The Corps doesn’t waste scarce resources.”

“That’s your idea of consolation, is it?” She radiated disgust, but also a glimmer of hope.  He was starting to think both were justified. “We tortured and maimed the woman you love, but don’t fret – there’s a high probability that her husk retains an asset value.”

It caught him right in the gut. He could only watch himself stand there with his mouth hanging open until he gathered enough control to snap it shut. (He heard the teeth click.)

“Ah hell! I didn’t mean… I didn’t think…” Her face and her mood both shifted to concern as she put a hand on his shoulder and steered him to the couch. “I guess we have more in common than I thought.”

Don’t think about Carolyn in the spikes of the Machine, the Machine in Carolyn… The aliens maimed her mind, but it was someone in the Corps who sold her to them. He needed to breathe but his nose and mouth wouldn’t take in air. Move the ribs up and out, that was it.  Now down again to squeeze it out.  Keep it going…

“I fucking hate the Psi Corps!” She barked a laugh.  “No, I’ve _hated_ them since I was a child.  I don’t think there are words for how I feel about them now.”

“Not all the Corps.”

“No?  Just a few bad apples, huh? You’re not dumb enough to buy that old line.”

Just now, he wasn’t sure what he bought, or how dumb he was, and he didn’t want to talk about it. Luckily, neither did she.

“Listen, Bester, I’m a big girl. I can take it. You know more than you’re letting on, and I need to know if there’s anything left of _my_ Talia.  Didn’t you need that with Carolyn? What happened to ‘truth is truth’?

She had a point. He took a slow, deep breath, steadied his voice. “I really don’t know much, I don’t even know which personality was the original and which was the synthetic. But I know only one of them could survive activation. Your Talia is gone. I’m sorry.”

She put her face in her hands.  He knew how it hurt to lose that last bit of hope. There hadn’t been much left of Carolyn, little more than a limbic system lacerated by gears, racked by voltage, choked by circuits, but it had been enough to let him hope – until that died too.

He put an arm around her shoulders, half expecting a slap, but she turned her wet face towards him and tried to smile. “Multipurpose shiva,” he told her through his own tears. “Like you said.”

I was a better kind of hurt, this shared grief.  He settled back into the couch, allowed the outer edges of their minds to interleave, and his heavy eyelids to sink.


	5. Sweet dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody's looking for something.

Her own sources had already discovered that Bester had no part in Sigma – she’d hardly be helping him otherwise - but how much of the truth about Talia had he given her? He wouldn’t be Bester if he wasn’t holding something back or planting some useful fiction. Was it true that somewhere in the Psi Corps was a P5, a _loyal_ , _useful_ P5, who looked and sounded almost exactly like Talia Winters used to?  He seemed to imagine that would be a comfort, but she thought it mostly made things worse.

Sharing selves with him shouldn’t feel good, but she just couldn’t want to stop. He’d fallen asleep as soon as his eyes had closed – unmistakably real, exhausted sleep – and even he couldn’t pose much of a threat in that state. Just for a moment, she could allow the fuzzy edges of their psyches to run through each other like fingers caressing fur. He was right that she needed her own kind. That loneliness had played a part in her decision to bring him here. She could no longer deny it had also – in a very different way – helped to draw her to Talia.  She'd spent her life shunning telepaths for fear of being recognized but it was like avoiding food – only sustainable up to a point. How long would tonight’s binge keep her going?

With hindsight, her attempts at denial had led to ever-crazier risks. She couldn’t go on testing her luck. If she couldn’t live without telepathy, maybe this insane, mutually assured destruction arrangement with Bester really was the safest…

 

 _Danger!_   Terrible danger and no-one to help!   Only you can stop it, but you’re too slow! Faster, _faster!_  Stretch for those extra millimeters of stride, lean for momentum, never mind bouncing off the walls, pushing through doorways, pain barriers, rising mist of oxygen deprivation.  You can’t slow down for those, because it’s happening, the thing that only you can stop, and it’s worse than anything…

Medlab, have to get to medlab. Faster! The corridor has twists and turns that weren’t there before, and locks that don’t open for your command card. You find a mind with the emergency codes, rip them out. 

Too late. Medlab is empty, as you knew it would be. You crash to hands and knees, sobbing and gasping for breath. Damn! You tried so hard!

<Not hard enough!> The source of the mindvoice is out of sight but you can sense its crackling malevolence.

The floor buckles. A dust storm blooms from the side entrance.

Explosive charge, big one.  When you catch the bastards who used that on your space station, they’re going to find out _exactly_ how it feels to be sucked into vacuum through a hull breech.

Your gun lies on the floor, in a blanket of dust.  You want it, but your arm doesn’t respond. White bone pokes through the sleeve and the hand just hangs there, blood dripping down useless fingers. You shove it across your chest and under your jacket, quick, while shock still blocks pain. You reach for the gun with your other hand, but the fingers won’t open. “Help me,” you say. “I can do this.” It takes all your focus, but you force your fingers to uncurl, then clench around the PPG, white-knuckled one-hand grip, safety off.

Now you’re running again, towards, not away from.

The only person you care about is being snatched away, just ahead, just out of reach.

The mindvoice mocks you. <Catch her if you can!>

You chase it back through medlab, through a white room with chairs and a potted plant on a counter. The plant withers as the alien passes. You run down unfocussed corridors, the mindvoice just out of reach ahead of you, sounds of collapse and atmosphere loss just behind. Plants in the garden shrivel to grey slime, no life left.

Then the screams.

Shadow ships! The mindvoice was a distraction. You have to get to C and C where you can at least fight back.

Spider silhouettes swoop past outside, but the controls are dead. Weapons won’t fire, blast doors won’t close, but…

 _... people, we have a weapon!_   Can you freeze the mind inside the spider?

You don’t feel strong enough to even see the mind, but you try anyway – and get knocked off your feet by your own power. It surges out of you to skewer a Shadow ship like a shrimp. When did you learn to do _that?_ Now to get the weapons up while it’s paralyzed...

Guns? A waste of time when peeled minds are so easy to extinguish. Your power shifts from spikes to coils, tightens. The Shadow ship crumples like the flowers did. You’re already turning to find the next one, pinching, twisting, snapping the life out of it with skilled, effortless brutality, ripping enemies from your sky by the handful.

One spider breaks away, swings to counterattack. 

You twitch a coil towards it and encounter a mind with defenses – one of us! That makes it harder. But you have to destroy the enemy ships. Tried and trusted combat blocks click into place as you feint a lateral attack; the mind in the ship blocks as anticipated. You sling the tendrils of a real attack in an arc to choke its awareness from behind. It’s too easy.

It’s _Carolyn_.

Your attack stutters, melts into caress. The Machine screams hate, Carolyn’s mind impaled under its claws, pulsing terror and pain. Her trampled consciousness writhes. From some desperate, bleeding slice of perception, she calls you by name and begs you to end it. You can’t lose her. You can’t lose Talia. (Because Carolyn is also Talia, which makes sense now you think of it as obviously the sleeper personality would be only a P5.) None of that matters, not her face, not her rating, not her name, not even what they've turned her into. You cannot hurt this person.

<I love you!> you cast. 

The Machine shrieks derision as Talia-Carolyn burns a beam clean through the station and bisects your skull.

 

 

<Don't!> Bester cast, his eyes wide, black, and right inside hers.

She raised a hand to push him back, but her fingers were stuck in a fist. Where had her own hand gone?

Someone’s psi fingers teased the strands apart: my thought, your thought, my thought reflected in his mind, his mind reflecting my thought, my hands, my fingers, fingers flex nicely: check. 

“Yup, OK. I got it. I’m me.” Her voice gained steadiness with each word.  She hoped he’d missed the wobble in the first ones. She didn’t have to push him away.  He’d already retreated to the far end of the couch.

“We were having a nightmare,” he said, stating the obvious. “My nightmare.”

“Felt like _my_ skull getting incinerated.”

“And I cared about your stupid station – psychic overlay.”

“But a lot of it was real, wasn’t it?”

Silence. He shuddered and put his face in his hand.

She didn’t want to ask, but she had to know. “Did the Corps give what was left of Talia to the Shadows? Did they put her in a ship?”

“I don’t know. The shipment you helped me stop was the first one I heard about. It’s possible there had already been others, or one-off tests. It's not likely, but I can’t rule it out for certain. I’m sorry.”

Somehow, they were close again, arms around each other like abandoned children. She’d stopped pretending not to cry. So had he.

“Wait!” He pushed her away, but only to arms’ length, enough separation to let him glare at her, not enough to part them. “Killing Shadows with psi didn’t come from me.  That was more than wish fulfilment. You _knew_ they had a weakness?  Is that… real?”

She nodded. “That’s why they backed off attacking the White Star when you were on it.” She felt his surge of joy and pride at that, then fury that he hadn’t known. “We didn’t understand it then -  Garibaldi figured it out after you’d left. Narns used telepaths to drive the Shadows off their world, long ago.  That’s why there are no Narn telepaths now. That’s why the Shadows wanted telepaths in their ships this time, for defense.  Once we knew, we were able to use Lyta and others…”

“The Shadows were afraid of us! We were the key!” Rage flared from him, meant to be visible. “Sheridan would rather let the Shadows win than trust us.”

“Psi Corps was working on the Shadows’ side, remember?”

“ _I_ wasn’t! You knew that. So did he. I could have helped, could have…” His blocks snicked shut as his voice tailed off.

He’d wanted her to see his anger, so why lock it away now? To stop her following it to deeper secrets? But she’d been deeper into his mind than that, hadn’t she? Deep enough to see how easily he killed… No. Don’t think about that yet.

He gently tucked her hair behind her ears, his blocks masking whatever was going on behind his look of concern. “I’m sorry you got caught up in my dream. I should have protected you.”

“I’m fine.  I used to share dreams with my mother, when I was little. Later too, sometimes, between doses, when sleepers were wearing off. Those could get pretty intense.”

“I’m sure.” His face was grim now, blocks still tight. “But this was different. You shouldn’t have seen what they did to Carolyn, especially not overlaid with your feelings for Talia."

She could only nod and blink.

“I truly don’t think they gave Talia to the Shadows.  But I’ll do some digging back home. I promise I’ll tell you everything I find out.”

“Thank you.  However bad it is, I want to know.”

“You will. But I could make it easier on you until then. I could push those images to the back of your mind, out of the way.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” There was no way anyone but her was going to sort through the wreckage the nightmare had left, that mutilated consciousness, pierced and pinned in a steel trap.   “Is that what you saw in Carolyn’s mind that time in medlab? Was that a memory, or just... whatever the name is for the opposite of wish fulfilment?”

He looked at her sidelong. “You don’t want to know.”

“Yes. I do. Truth is truth.”

He looked down at his hands, avoiding eye contact, all emotion locked down tight. “Her mind was cut open, pinned, vivisected." The information came through his voice only, sanitized little packages of vowels and consonants. She was grateful for that. "What was left of her identity was flailing and raging as it drowned. Just before the sedative knocked her out, there was a moment when the Shadow tech let go. That’s when she showed me what had happened, the aliens and the ships.” 

“I’m so sorry.”

“She wanted me to kill her.  I couldn’t.”

Could she do that for Talia, if it came to it?

“I think you might.” His mouth twisted. “You care about other people.”

“Hey.” She put a hand on his shoulder, screening her thoughts while she searched for words to speak truth without hurt. “I’m sure you’ve done plenty of things you ought to regret, but don’t disown the ones that make you human.”

His eyes went wide at that, and he swallowed hard. “I wish you could have met her,” he whispered. “She was so alive, so… … _free_. Even in a detention cell.” His blocks dissolved to let her in. Carolyn sat on a narrow bunk, lithe and graceful despite the cuff that bound one hand to the rail. Her free hand and her thoughts darted like dragonflies. She fizzed with amusement at the absurdity of an institution that would chain her up for saying aloud what they’d heard her thinking for months. And of Al trying to talk her into contrition while his thoughts sang that she was worth hundreds of the fools demanding a show of remorse. They let their voices speak the expected, practiced words, but their minds wove a brighter dance…

His blocks reformed, gently returning her to her own mind. “This may make me the biggest fool in the Corps, and you’re welcome to laugh, but that’s how it felt. I know she had every reason to fake it, but I could almost believe – part of me does believe – that she truly loved me back.” He looked down as if he’d confessed to something shameful.

“I’m not laughing.”

A question formed in his mind. She waited for him to speak it aloud. “Is it… possible, do you think?”

“Yes.” She was surprised and relieved in equal measure to find that she meant it. “Yes, it is. Before tonight, I’d have said there was no way, but now, yes: I think it's possible." But how could a P12 not know whether he was being lied to? It didn’t seem right to ask but, of course, she already had.

“You’re right. I had training, authority, drugs on my side. I could quite easily have found the truth by force.”

“But then you’d have either found out that she never loved you at all, or that she did, and you’d just broken it.”

He smiled. “You know, at your age, I wouldn’t have figured that out.”

“But now you have, and that’s exactly why I think it's possible that she loved you.”

His mind reached to touch the thought in hers as if it were a glass bubble that a breath might shatter.

She couldn’t muster any outrage at the intrusion. Instead, she let him touch it, take the weight, and feel the solidity of her belief in the possibility.

He took the bubble in both hands, a look of wonder on his face as he held it close. Then he returned it to her and drew back into his own mind. “Thank you,” he sighed, closing his eyes in relief. “I never… No-one ever…” He gave up on words and sent her a rush of perceptions – fake callousness that fooled most of his colleagues – pity or ridicule from the few sharp enough to see through it – and, from all of them, unanimous, concrete certainty. Not one of them so much as considered the possibility that Carolyn might not be playing him.

He was keeping their minds apart now, but watching her face very closely as he asked, “Does that change your opinion?”

“What? No! Look, I never knew Carolyn. I can’t tell you how she really felt. But I’m not going to trust a bunch of cynical, arrogant prison warders to guess for me!”

He closed his eyes, breathed. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. There are more things on Earth than are dreamed of in your Psi Corps. Remember that.”

“So, if I want to be happy, I just need to think more like Hamlet? I admire your optimism.”

The silence that followed was both vocal and mental, but not uncomfortable.

Bester was the first to break it. “She would have shown me the truth one day, if we’d had more time.” He shrugged. “Now I’ll never know for sure.”

“No.”

She was about to take his hand when a cheery ping and the scent of warm, folded clothes sliding out of the laundry broke the moment.

 

 

When he returned, neat again in black and gray, his face and mind had a darker cast, with the tang of anger.

“I finally worked out who I just sat shiva for. The only person I truly care about. Myself.”

“Um?” She cast puzzlement at him.

“Carolyn brought something back to life inside me. It’s been a struggle to keep it alive without her. Being here, with you, has been a drink of water in the desert, but when I put those on -” He jabbed his chin towards his jacket and gloves where they lay crumpled on the floor. “- and go home… I can’t do it any more, not alone.  Carolyn could reach the part of me that isn’t a psi cop. I’ve lost her – now I’ll lose that.” He spoke the last words fast, just about getting through them before the wobble in his voice lost plausible deniability.

“No! That’s not true. At least, it doesn’t have to be. Does it?” Damn, she was flailing here. She wanted to tell him he could be as alive as he wanted, that he didn’t have to settle for dead-inside psi cop just because Carolyn was gone. But, given what she already knew about Bester and the Psi Corps… She didn’t want to lie to him even if it had been possible.

He watched her in silence, head slightly tilted, eyes narrowed.

She took a deep breath.  Yes, she really was going to do this. “Look,” she said, “I’m not volunteering to be your next love interest, but if you wanted to come here from time to time, leave the psi cop at the door, and just talk for a while as one human to another, I’d be up for that – as long as you behave yourself and don’t make trouble on my station.”

“I...” He blinked, let out his breath, shook his head. “I’d like that very much. On one condition.”

“What?  I offer you a massive favor and now _you’re_ making conditions?”

“I can’t accept unless I have some way to repay you. I hate to be in anyone’s debt.”

“Jesus wept! I already said don’t make trouble on my station.  That alone would bring about a major improvement in my quality of life and job satisfaction, amply repaying any favors done to you. Does that satisfy your pride?”

“That’s psi cop stuff.” He flicked the suggestion away. “I want to do something for you after I leave the psi cop at the door, as one telepath to another. I want you to let me help you train your psi.”

“You are not coming near me with Psi Corps training programs!”

“Of course not.  I mean training to help you be what you are – and to help you stay under the Corps’ radar. After all, I now have a vested interest in keeping you out of our hands.”

“Can you teach me to block a psi cop?”

“You know I can’t. In fact, attempting to block would only draw attention to your talent. But you don’t need to block if you’re not being scanned.  I can teach you how to pass for a mundane at a casual glance.

She’d thought she was doing that already, until tonight.

“Any half-competent teep would trip over your leaking psi at 20 meters.”

“Talia? Lyta?”

“P5s would need to get really close, touching distance – maybe actual touch.”

Like the touch of Talia’s skin? Of her lips?

“Commercial teeps are taught to respect privacy even at the cost of muting their own senses. Maybe Talia was exceptionally conscientious. Maybe she found a way to hide her knowledge from Control. Lyta? I honestly don’t know what Lyta can or can’t do these days, but she’s hardly likely to turn you in to the Corps, is she? However, if you find yourself in the same room with one of my colleagues, it’s all over.”

“That can’t be true.  You’re not the only Psi Corps representative who’s come through here. Nobody picked me up.”

“No? Kelsey was looking forward to taking you home with us if Sinclair hadn’t let Ironheart murder her. Harriman _might_ have missed you – he’s a good little teep who tightens his own blindfold. But then you went and told him you could sense his psi! He has a soft spot for Earthforce, and he took quite a shine to you, so he forgot to include that in his report. You got lucky.”

She felt cold, sick.

“And then I forgot to include it in _my_ report on his debriefing scan.”  He leaned in and touched her forearm, a concerned parent dealing with a stubborn teen. “How long can you go on testing your luck like this?”

She’d reached the same conclusion on her own, if not the solution he was proposing. And he did have a vested interest in keeping her safe from the Corps.

“OK. I’ll bite. We’ll give it a try and see how it goes. I’ll give you a place where you don’t have to be a psi cop, and you can show me how to handle my talent better. Come by here next time you’re on B5, just you, not the Corps.  You leave the badge and gloves at the door and we’ll take it from there.  No promises.  One visit at a time.”

“No Psi Corps, just us,” he repeated, as if that was a difficult concept. “Not cops, not blips, just two telepaths together. Yes.”

“If we can help each other, great.  If not, we’ll go our separate ways.”

“And forget we ever met?” He raised an eyebrow. “I can help you with that too, if need be. But I’d prefer not.”  He was already putting on his shoes as he spoke, so she couldn’t see his face. “You helped me a great deal tonight. I’m not sure why, and I don’t believe you are either, but I’m grateful. I’ll do what I can to repay you.” He picked up his jacket and gloves, opened the door. “Telepaths should help each other when we get the chance. Goodbye for now, Commander, and thank you.”

“Good bye. See you later.”

The door hissed shut behind him and she leaned heavily on it. What the hell had she just gotten herself into?  Face your demons, they said. It’ll make you stronger, they said. Well, this was going to make trouble of one kind or another, that was for sure.  But, she thought, sometimes I _like_ trouble.  Hell, most days, I _am_ trouble. Despite the lack of sleep, she felt better than she had in a long, long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of Shiva. I have a few ideas for more stories in the Headwaters series, but nothing remotely close to finished. 
> 
> Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think - would you trust Bester now?


End file.
